She Writes on Fridays: Where Do YOU Write Best?

What the mental space of place tells us about where we are

With the exponential growth and excitement of She Writes, I’ve been a little, uh, busy. So a few weeks back, I officially declared Fridays a day for devoting myself—even if only for 30 minutes on the subway—to writing. And then it hit me: I actually write best on the subway. And on planes. And on long-distance trains. When I am neither here nor there, when the iPhone is blessedly in the red zone and I am off limits, then and only then these days can it, you know, flow.

Where we write says something, I believe, about where we are in our writing lives. In graduate school, I could only write in the monastic quiet of my apartment. When I later wrote my first book, it had to be in cafes. And now, as a first-time mother of four-month-old twins and a founding partner here at She Writes, I can only write in those in between spaces while shuttling from here to there.

Having accepted the reality that my current office is rolling and on wheels, I no longer feel itchy. Wherever you go there you are yadda yadda. But it’s an aphorism I’m coming to embrace, along with the notion that my genre changes with the change of locale, and, too, with the season of life. That Madison apartment was great for a single gal in her twenties slaving away at a dissertation. New York City cafes, on writing dates with a writing buddy, were great for a co-edited anthology and then for my first single-authored book. And now, the subway speaks best to the snippet-sized memoir writing I am doing as I chronicle new motherhood and the gendered development of my boy/girl twins. The subway, oddly, is conducive. In the new writing, my sentences are shorter, my thoughts more spontaneous, my language, I think, more clear.

So tell me She Writers: Where do you write best these days? What does it tell you about where you’re at in your own writing life? How does where you write affect the material you write?

Or TRY THIS: snap a picture of where you write best—not where you think you should be generating those reams of pages for your next novel/essay/script, but the place where your writing spontaneously and productively occurs. Post it on the blog that lives on your profile page here at She Writes. I’ll compile a mash up and post a selection of these photos with my next post, along with links to your blogs. Just be sure to ping me (e-mail me through the site, or at deborah@shewrites.com) so I know it’s there.

Tags: #process/craft

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Comment by Diane Meier on March 22, 2010 at 1:19pm: I can't imagine being able to write a novel without a computer. The Season of Second Chances was brought forth in stolen moments - stolen in the twenty minutes I waited for a printer to call me back, or to hear from a client about whether they could schedule a meeting with their whole team for Tuesday or Thursday. It was stolen from evenings when I knew that if I worked any longer on a client's I would overwork the whole thing and have to start from scratch. So - the place - the physical spot in which I wrote -- became which ever computer I happened to be near - here, in my office or at the studio desk, or home in CT - where my files transfer. But the emotional "where" was a place where stepping away from the 'day job' was as easy as taking a phone call. Or breaking for tea. Or having a conversation with a colleague. Teddy and Joy and the rest of the cast of the book were just there, waiting for me to give them a moment - and sometimes -- often, actually - it wasn't more than a moment. But what a great break for me.

Comment by Natalie Wilson on March 17, 2010 at 4:42am: I'm still figuring this out, and it seems to change. In warmer months, it's under a tree in Central Park with my laptop. I'm so looking forward to that being an option again soon. In the meantime, I'm relegated to my apartment.

Lately, I've discovered I have to be disciplined in my approach. I used to be able to sit/lie on my couch/bed (I live in a studio, you see), start writing at 11pm and get a wind that would take me til 2 or 3am. My schedule is so hectic now that if I try that, I just fall alseep. So now it's at the table for me, preferably at some time of the day before dinner, with the kitchen timer set for 1 hour. I don't have the luxury of several free hours in a row these days, so squeezing in an hour a day is my goal. I managed to get a whole new scene written that way last week!

Comment by Nora Gaskin Esthimer on March 16, 2010 at 5:17pm: Deborah, I've posted a photo of my bed on my blog--looking forward to seeing photos of others' favorite spots. This is fun to read.

Comment by Annette Tomei on March 16, 2010 at 8:39am: Hi Judith - I am also in love with my little yellow note pad on my iPhone! I'm a cronic list maker and note taker. It makes it so easy.
I love reading all the great inspirational places to write. Thanks to all!

Comment by Judith van Praag on March 16, 2010 at 7:31am: Right now, I am where I think I do some of my best writing, on the couch, in the living room, at this very moment with my iBook, other times with my NEO on my lap. It used to be I wrote best by hand and on the go and I'd type out my notes later. Until 2001, when my arm froze, shutting down all activity from fingertips to elbow. Even when the thaw set in, I wasn't able to write by hand anymore. No more note-taking on the go. Until I got my iPhone! I'm back to taking notes wherever I am, and yes some of my best writing is done on the go again! I love the yellow pad app and being able to later find my notes typed and all in my e-mailbox. So, couch and on the go are best places for "flow", but the best writing I do is behind my computer in my writing den, with my bottom glued to the seat, no where to run, going places only in my mind.

Comment by Angela Christine Ragosa on March 15, 2010 at 8:30pm: I did indeed, finally discover the perfect spot for me! It took traveling 600 miles from my permanent residence in Texas and moving into a condo, which sits alongside the Gulf of Mexico on a beach where I spent my childhood,teen years and on up into early adulthood. I found I was desperately needing to taste, touch, hear, smell, experience all that was at one time, second nature to me. I find it absolutely mind boggling how a certain smell from a nearby bakery can trigger a memory of something far from baked goods within my mind... I currently split my time 50/50 between my home in Texas and the condo in Florida...I have posted a photo of my writing room (which is actually my terrace) on my page.

Comment by Bev Sykes on March 15, 2010 at 10:15am: I'm one of these people who can't WRITE, I type. My handwriting is stilted and boring. I think at the keyboard and my fingers keep up with my thought process, so my favorite place to write is sitting at my desk using my desktop. In a pinch, I can use my laptop, but my girth makes having a computer in my LAP uncomfortable (and the dogs who share my lap make it almost impossible)

Comment by Phoebe Wilcox on March 14, 2010 at 7:54pm: As I've been going through the last or second-to-last edit of my novel here Angels Carry the Sun, I've been noticing that some of the best scenes were written when I had long stretches of uninterrupted time. One was written when I was at the Fine Arts Work Center in Cape Cod several years back. I remember that day. I wrote for about eight hours straight in this quiet little room. I was so carried away I hardly got up to eat or drink or go to the bathroom. But the results were spectacular. In my ordinary life, my best writing time is on my lunch break at work, from noon to one. I often listen to music through buds so not to be so distracted by office chatter. I've had friends marvel though at how I can sit and write in the middle of a noisy, crowded room. That's because I don't have a lot of privacy; my life is teeming with interruptions. And I've always been the sort of person who could be so lost in thought as to miss the bomb blast next door. That's just me!

Comment by Ashley Ladd on March 14, 2010 at 6:40pm: I write best at Borders and Barnes & Nobles. Unfortunately, today when I went, I couldn't get a seat near a plug before my battery ran down. So I came home and wrote instead.

Comment by Cris Mazza on March 14, 2010 at 12:21pm: For the "I gotta write this down (or remember this) now" stuff, I use a digital recorder, on my nightstand, on the car seat beside me, etc. But sometimes a notebook and longhand will do for that as well. I don't write well any place but home, though. No public spaces, not even my office on campus. I am getting some pretty bad repetitive-motion issues, though. Not wrists ... my shoulders.